I didn’t make it. Not even close. Final count was 12,044.
Hadn’t even gotten to the second act. I don’t know if I’ll come back to it and try to finish it or not. We’ll see. It’s still an accomplishment, I suppose – most I’ve managed to write in over a year – but very disheartening.
Being chronically ill is the absolute shits.
Figured it might be nice to not do something involving the spook, and instead do the beginning. Enjoy.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“What the fuck are you doing? Where the hell are your shoes?”
The voice came from somewhere further inside the house, the heavy walls and their tapestries deadening it, killing any echoes and making it hard to tell where it had come from. Still, Danny knew it well enough. Calm, despite the words it chose. Deep, rumbling like a subterranean landslide. Faint traces of an accent, but one that was almost impossible to define.
“Taking care of the floor, man! Isn’t that some shit you’re into? Don’t wanna track all over the place.”
Danny’s voice was shrill, nasal, almost the human equivalent of nails on chalkboard. He hated the sound of it himself, and would complain about it to anyone who even vaguely touched the subject, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Puberty and its mysterious ways had been unkind to him in that regard.
The owner of the other voice had appeared at the end of the hall leading from the entryway. Contrary to his irritation at Danny’s lack of footwear, he was barefoot. A pair of gray sweats were the only clothing he wore. His chest was bare, shiny with sweat. Danny assumed the other man had been in the middle of one of his routines when he’d heard the bell.
“I like to keep my floor clean, yeah. That’s why I don’t want your nasty feet dragging on it. I mean, couldn’t you at least wear some socks? Go put your shoes back on. Then meet me in the kitchen.”
The man turned to his left, slipping through a beaded curtain that blended so well into the wall that it would have been invisible if you didn’t know to look for it. He was silent as he did so, and despite the rattling Danny knew he’d provoke by walking through it, the beads barely moved, as though they refused to defy the master of the house.
“Uh… right. Whatever you say, Ichi.”
His voice shook more than usual, and Danny cursed himself for it. Ichiro had never done anything to make him feel the pulse of fear that always quaked through him in the other man’s presence. Nothing to him, anyway. But Danny still always had to wonder if one day that would change.
He slunk back up the two short steps that separated the main room from the entrance, slipping his feet into the battered sneakers that had last been replaced sometime during Obama’s first term, before moving to follow Ichiro through the curtain.
He slipped past the beads, suppressing a shiver as they slid over his shoulders in a way that made him think of creatures raking their nails against his body in an attempt to snare him. Ichi’s kitchen was clean, though not in the way Danny would have preferred.
A clean kitchen, to Danny, spoke of use and care. Nicks in the counter, a permanent stain under the coffee pot that was so old and ingrained that it was seared into the fabric of the table but shone with polish anyway. Curtains that had faded a little, that maybe had a blot of pie filling at the edge.
Ichi’s kitchen was clean the way a sterile room was clean. Gleaming white tile, black and chrome appliances that looked like they had just come from the showroom floor minutes before, perfectly clear windows without adornment, pots, pans, and cutlery polished to a mirror sheen and arranged on metal runners more suited for display than usage. To Danny, it looked like a surgical ward, and part of him wondered if it had ever been used that way. It wouldn’t have surprised him.
Ichi was sitting at the table in the middle of the room, an oak affair on iron legs that would have looked more at home in a boardroom than a kitchen. Arrayed at five points were short stools of black steel with glass seats. Not comfortable looking in the least, but Danny was thankful he wouldn’t be sitting cross-legged on the floor. Ichi was prone to making him do that, and it always made Danny’s knees ache.
One of Ichi’s brows rose, as his hand gestured to one of the stools.
“Sit. Stop staring. I pay you for information, not to mess up my floors and admire my decor.”
Danny’s head bobbed with enthusiasm, and he slid across the floor putting as little weight into his steps as possible. He made it to the stool without incident, but pulling it out produced an unpleasant shriek of metal on tile, and as he dropped into the seat he saw the black scuff mark the chair leg had left.
Ichi’s expression was unchanged, but Danny thought he could smell the other man’s irritation. He gave a pained smile, shrugged, and sat down.
“Yeah. You do. S’why I’m here. Information.”
Ichi continued to glare, eyes boring into Danny. Danny hated it when Ichi did that; sometimes it felt like the man was sifting through his guts and brain simultaneously, digging up every piece of dirt he could. When Ichi looked at him like that, Danny wondered why the man needed people to bring him information. All he really needed to do was stare someone down, and if he couldn’t just read their mind, even some of the toughies on the Southside would start spewing whatever info Ichi wanted.
“Um. Yeah. You told me to keep an eye out for anybody who’s real particular about their collars, doesn’t ditch their shirts or coats even when it’s boiling outside, don’t talk much. Especially if they’re hanging around the kid, right?”
Ichi said nothing. Danny wasn’t surprised. He cleared his throat before continuing.
“Well, there’s a couple that just got into town. Haven’t seen ’em myself yet, but one of them was asking around for the kid, and the other’s been asking around for someone who sounds a lot like you. Mentioned your back and everything.”
The other man’s hands clenched, producing a click as the thick silver ring on his right index finger rapped against the table. Danny jumped at the sound. Ichi’s teeth shone through his lips in a grimace.
“So they’re here. Finally.”
His voice was a growl, lacking in human inflection. Danny found it most interesting, as he’d expected Ichi to at least be surprised. Or angry. Or anything. Snarling resignation hadn’t been the response he thought he’d get.
“Um, yeah. Sounds like it, boss. I’ve got a couple guys sniffing them out, checking their credentials. They’ll call me as soon as they know more, and I’ll call you right after, but I figured you’d wanna know ASAP.”
“For once, you’re correct.”
Ichi steepled his fingers, bowing his head into them for a moment and closing his eyes. If he hadn’t seen the behavior before, Danny might have thought Ichi had slipped into a narcoleptic fit or something. He knew the other man was just thinking, though, and thinking hard. Danny remained quiet, giving Ichi time to muddle through whatever was going on inside his skull.
“Daniel.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is Raioh?”
“The kid? Last I saw him, he was on the schoolyard, playing baseball or something. Mark’s got an eye on him, will pick him up after school. You told me not to mess up his life too bad unless we have to. Since they haven’t found him yet, figured we didn’t have to. Yet.”
Ichi nodded, keeping his head behind his hands.
“Correct. So long as they don’t go near the school, he stays. Have Mark take him somewhere else. A vacation. You do not know where, I do not know where, no one knows where. Mark and Raioh only. Understood?”
“Yeah,” Danny said. He’d learned there was no such thing as a disagreeable order a long time ago. What Ichi said was how it went down, and asking questions was liable to become more trouble than it was worth.
“Good.”
Despite the word, very little of Ichi’s expression seemed to imply anything good about the situation. He folded his hands on the table, staring at the reflection of his own fingers in the mirror sheen for a long moment, then spoke again.
“You say they are asking about me. Or someone a lot like me, anyway. What, specifically, have they asked.”
Danny coughed into his hand, looking away. Bringing up this subject was liable to get Ichiro ansty, possibly even angry, and Danny preferred not to talk about it. But when your boss’s back is covered in an exceptionally elaborate tattoo that quite a few of the less-than-savory folks in the neighborhood are aware of, it tends to be a central point of identity.
“Well, they were… uh… asking about a guy with a tattoo.”
Ichi’s face remained stony, eyes unblinking. Danny took it as a cue to keep talking.
“Said they’re looking for a man with a big flower on his back. A chrysanthemum. Stylized. Heavy ink.”
Ichi nodded.
“Unfortunate. But not entirely unexpected. What else?”
Danny gulped. He wasn’t looking forward to the next detail.
“They also mentioned that the flower might be covered up or overlaid with a dragon or a snake that wraps around the guy’s shoulders.”
He glanced down into his lap, not daring to meet Ichi’s gaze after that. The other man had done some touch up work on the elaborate tattoo once he had settled here, and supposedly only a handful of people were aware of the changes. Even if someone had come looking for him, the change should have thrown them off, at least for a time. But if these goons were asking about the serpent as well as the flower, that meant they knew something they shouldn’t… and Danny could be held responsible.
Ichi surprised him, however. There was no anger, no accusations. Just a slow nod.
“I see.”
Ichiro took a deep breath, eyes closed, as though centering himself. Danny took the opportunity to raise his eyes again, watching the other man carefully. Several seconds passed with neither moving before Ichi spoke again.
“It will be fine. Bring them to me. Make no threats. Make no promises. Find them, and inform them that I wish to speak to them. Give them my name.”
Ichi’s eyes opened, locking on Danny’s and seeming to spark with a fervor and passion Danny rarely saw coming from the man.
“But do so only after Raioh has been escorted away.”
Danny nodded.
“Uh, sure. Yeah, I can do that. But…”
He trailed off, throat running dry.
“But what?”
Danny coughed again, then bit the tip of his tongue to force some spit through his mouth.
“Is that the best idea? I mean… what if they’re here to cause trouble?”
Ichi laughed, a low rumble like the idle of a diesel truck, but Danny didn’t think there was any actual amusement in it.
“And if they are? They know who they are looking for, and know enough to be aware of things that have changed since the last time their organization saw me. Better to face the tiger head on than hide and have it strike you in the back. Besides… they may only be looking to curry favor with Oyabun Kenose. They will not receive such favors, but let them try, regardless.”
Ichi pushed up off the stool.
“You know what you are to do. Now do it.”
He turned away from Danny, giving the man a full view of the elaborate flower that had been painstakingly etched into his back. Circles of yellow and white, done with a traditional chiseled style, the chrysanthemum. Ichi had told Danny once they were flowers of mourning, done to remember the dead. Danny had never asked who was being remembered, but had often suspected it had to do with the boy Ichi was so determined to keep safe.
Laid atop and intertwined with the flower was a much more recent addition. A long black serpentine dragon, claws digging into petal groups, with the tail circling around to Ichi’s ribcage and the head lapping at his neck. Being significantly fresher, Danny could still see some of the blood beads caused by the chiseling.
Shaking his head to clear it, knowing he had better things to do than admire the craftsmanship of Ichi’s tattoo or worry about the implications of it, Danny stood up.
Through some miracle he avoided causing anymore gouges in the tile floor.
He scurried out, phone already going to his ear and Mark’s number being speed-dialed. Best get it done.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Figured I’d post another chunk of the WIP. Let me know what you think.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Magoichi Saika was feeling unwell. It had started just as they’d been getting ready to leave the little punk’s house, a tickle of nausea and dizziness that he’d written off as a bad taco and the heat. How anyone lived in this hellhole, he didn’t know. One hundred plus degrees, practically year round, and air conditioning was still considered an optional luxury? Insane.
When they’d gotten back to their hotel, he’d cranked up the AC – that had cost them extra, but thankfully Oyabun Kenose was generous – and plopped himself directly in front of it, shrugging out of his sport coat and undoing all the buttons on his shirt. It hadn’t helped. He was cooled down, sure, but it only seemed to make the sickness worse. Rikya had asked him if he wanted dinner, and Saika had waved him off. That had been about an hour ago; Saika figured his partner must have found something else to keep him busy besides a burger run.
That was fine. He hated other people seeing him when he was sick. It showed weakness, and Saika hated looking weak more than anything.
Sweat was running down his face in rivers, which was a bitter joke given how cold he felt. But the cold didn’t feel like it was coming from the air conditioner in front of him, or the room itself, despite it probably being below 60 degrees overall. The chill was coming from somewhere inside, like he’d buried an ice cube somewhere in his chest that was somehow freezing the rest of him from the inside out.
“You’re going to pay.”
Saika jumped, knocking the flimsy plastic chair out from under himself and falling to the ground. He landed face first, and could feel blood dripping from his nose as he sat back up.
“What?” His head snapped from side to side, eyes rolling in the sockets as he tried to spot the source of that voice. They’d swept the room when they first came in, and it had been clean and inaccessible except through the front door. Rikya was gone, and would have likely announced his return; no one should have been able to get inside, let alone do it without Saika noticing and get close to enough to speak to him and vanish again immediately.
The room was still as empty as it had been when they’d first checked in, the only sign that anyone had been there at all being the suitcases sitting on the beds, the toppled chair, and the AC grinding away as it chewed up the hot clouds the natives had the nerve to call air and spat out a blessedly cool, moist breeze. Nothing – no one – here.
“I’m here,” the voice said, and this time Saika realized where it had come from.
His own mouth.
“What the fu-”
His jaw snapped shut on the words without his own will issuing the command. When it opened again, the voice that came from it was not quite his own. It almost sounded layered, as though there was another voice saying the same thing a half second early and in a higher pitch.
“Shut up. Your time is done. You’re going to pay.”
Saika’s hands went to his throat. He could feel the muscles beneath his fingers, flexing in tune to whatever puppetmaster was using his mouth as a speaker. The flesh of his neck was cold and clammy, making his fingers feel frostbitten as he pulled them away with a gasp and a wince. Moving was growing harder, and felt as though something was resisting him, something or someone pulling his muscles in the opposite direction of however he was trying to move.
“It’s not fun to fight against someone stronger than you, is it?”
The voice had lost most of Saika’s resonance, now being distinctly feminine, with an accent that reminded him of the rubes down in Kansai. He could still hear his own voice, but now it was the backbeat, no longer dominant. His arms had run cold as well, and the ice was seeping into his legs as they pushed him up.
He found himself stalking jerkily towards the bathroom. He tried to lock his knees, to will himself to fall down, to turn and run the other way, to do anything, but he was completely at the mercy of whatever force had come over him.
“It’s not fun when someone like that shoves you into a tub, and does whatever they want, is it?”
He saw his hands reach down and take hold of the tap controls of the tub, but couldn’t feel them. They were no longer his hands in any way that mattered. They spun the handles and clear water sprayed from the faucet, already collecting in the deep end and starting to pool even before his hands dropped the plunger in place.
“Looks like it was a little clogged, doesn’t it? That’s alright, though. It won’t matter.”
He reached into his pocket, digging past the smattering of change and the small keyring to fish out the knife. His hands held the knife in front of his eyes for a moment, turning it from side to side, making sure to catch the gleam of the overhead lights against the gunmetal gray hilt, before it slid the blade out. He saw his thumb run along the edge, splitting the flesh and causing several drops of blood to splatter on the floor.
He had no control of what was going on now. He felt nothing in most parts of his body, complete deprivation of feeling, except for the tip of his thumb where the blade had bitten. He could feel that with an exquisite sharpness, as though all his consciousness was focused on that one part of his anatomy, tangling with the severed nerves and screaming in unison.
That scream went unvocalized. His mouth instead emitted a laugh.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? It’s going to hurt more soon enough.”
One of his legs lifted up and over the lip of the tub, the expensive leather shoes doing nothing to prevent the water from flooding in and soaking the skin beneath. The water level was rising, coming up over the hem of his pants leg. The force moving him didn’t seem concerned, as it lifted the other leg into the tub, and sat down.
His body leaned back, bracing the legs against the wall, so his head was against the bottom of the tub. His hair, growing wet and losing some of the gel that held it in place, began to tickle against his cheeks and neck.
“So what’ll it be? Drowning, or the knife? I don’t remember which you did to me, so I can’t decide.”
In the back of his mind, the only place that Saika could still think of as “his” – unlike his body, which was continuing to do whatever it wanted and completely divorced of any of his control or sensation, or his voice, which seemed to prefer spouting nonsense that didn’t have any correlation to his actual situation – an image flashed. Him, standing in a bathroom – one not nearly as nice as the one in which he now found himself, but definitely more personal and homey, something that belonged to someone who tried to take care of it, with a fuzzy toilet seat cover, a picture of a cat hanging across from the toilet, a dolphin-shaped soap dispenser and the like – and staring down into a chipped tub.
A woman was floating in the tub. Nothing unique about her to his eyes. He’d seen plenty of girls that way, half-submerged, eyes open but staring at nothing, wrists slashed. His father had shown him how, and he’d done a dozen himself. He didn’t know which one this was, or why she was taking the wet nap – there was always a reason, though he rarely cared what it was – or even when it was. But it was one of his, and he remembered how good it had felt, that spark of joy and vitality he felt right when they finally stopped struggling and whatever it was that kept a person up and moving slipped out of them.
Thinking about it, the feel of his hands around their throats, pushing them down and holding them beneath the water while they stared up at him was arousing. Apparently at least one part of his anatomy was still listening to his brain. His unwelcome passenger was able to sense it, too; her voice pushed the images and sensations aside.
“Ah, so drowning! Won’t need this, then.”
His hands tossed the knife aside, launching it in such a way that it embedded itself in the wall beside him, quivering. Then his body crunched down as low as it could, submerging his face beneath the rising waters.
He tried to scream. Tried to thrash. Tried to do anything. No part of him responded, and his screams only echoed back to him in the emptiness of his own mind. He could feel the cold water soaking through his clothes and lapping at his skin, could feel it flooding his mouth and stomach and lungs and chilling him from the inside out. He could feel his lungs straining, desperate to fill themselves with something other than fluid, felt a horrible bursting sensation inside as one of them ruptured from the strain.
Through it all, he heard laughter. The laughter of a woman, the one who’d told him he would pay. Behind that, a man’s voice, counting to ten.
Then, nothing.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Chrysanthemum Graves is up to 11k this week. Trying not to let it stall, even if it doesn’t make it to the 50k in a month. How’s your NaNoWriMo going?
Well, we’ve just passed the halfway point in NaNoWriMo. How’s everyone holding up? Have you managed the 25k words that are supposed to be in place at this point? Far ahead? Already done? Or are you, like me, dragging behind and wallowing in it?
I’m just about to break 10k. Yeah, not even close to the target, and I fall farther behind every day. Mainly because I can’t manage more than 800 words in a session, and usually closer to 400. But I still don’t feel too bad about it. I mean, I feel bad – I always do, isn’t being a bipolar schizophrenic depressive fun? – but I look at it in a slightly more positive light. I wrote something, and I have continued to manage to write something every day for the last 17 days. It may take me six months to finish Chrysanthemum Graves instead of the one month it’s supposed to, but at least I’ll finish the damn thing, and that’s an accomplishment for me. I haven’t managed to complete any writing material except a short piece called “Layers” in literal years, and maintaining any kind of consistent progress has been completely impossible for me.
So, whether I meet the 50k goal or not (spoilers: almost certainly not), NaNoWriMo did that much at least. Got me writing daily, and made me do something.
What about the rest of you? How goes your NaNo progress? Will you make it? Does it matter? Let us know down below!
I don’t know why I seem to like sharing the weird segments of this story that involve The Thirst, but it is what it is. Let me know what you think!
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The thirst had returned. As before, it came first, then other sensations. Unlike before, vision wasn’t merely a red cloud. Other colors were present this time, though all of them were muted, as though being seen through a piece of murky gauze.
The sound was duller than previously, and the consciousness that hung from the thirst like some barely-glimpsed parasite found there was room for emotion: gratefulness. Things had been far too noisy during that previous period of waking, and now it seemed more normal. The bugs in the walls and the hum of every piece of electronic equipment was gone, as was the thrumming of the man’s heartbeat.
There were voices. Coming from somewhere in the house. A thought, and they drew close. Three voices, three men. Two large ones, one the man from the night before. The larger ones were speaking rapidly, angrily; the other was responding with an apparent calm that seemed to stoke the rage of the two argumentative ones.
The thirst knew they were speaking, and could taste the flavor of the emotions contained in the words, but was unable to make out the words themselves. It might have thought this was odd, if it were capable of thinking as such. As it was, it was only interested in the flares of color and scent that burst around each of the men as they threw their words at each other like weapons.
There. The one with the longer hair. A splash of black across his torso, as though ink had been spilled. A rotten scent, the stench of sewers and backed up disposal units. Something wrong with him.
Cancer, maybe? The consciousness that piggybacked on the thirst asked, with the tentative voice of a little girl raising her hand for the first time in class, prepared to give an answer she was unsure of. The thirst didn’t know, and didn’t care. All it knew is that the one with the long hair would be foul tasting and unlikely to provide much in the way of sustenance.
The other one, who seemed to prefer being quiet except to punctuate his apparent friend’s statements, had no similar blemishes. He was surrounded by a faint green glow, and smelled of fresh grass.
Not here, the mind behind the thirst cautioned. Not now.
The thirst pulsed with rage for a moment, but subsided. That inner voice was right. It wasn’t entirely able to resist its urges, however; the thirst blinked, and found itself tangled around the long-haired man, breathing in that scent and relishing the smell that was underneath it. Something red, thick, metallic. What the thirst really wanted, what it needed. Something about this one was almost as appealing as the man from the other night, scratching an itch that the thirst didn’t understand it had.
There was a gap in the man, something missing from him in a fundamental way that the thirst could see but not explain. It knew what to do, how it would get what it wanted. Slipping into that metaphysical hole in his being, merging into it and settling in like a bear into a den, the thirst waited.
It didn’t know what it was waiting for, only that it would know, given time. This was what it was supposed to do. Something inside said so, just as it had said to wrap around the man from last night’s throat, just as it had whispered to awaken and see this man here. Something was guiding the actions of the thirst, something beyond or above the faint traces of a mind that it still possessed. Whatever guidance was being provided was nearly of the highest importance, second only to the thirst itself. The thirst, having been sated previously, chose to follow direction.
Curling within the man, the thirst saw a multitude of images flickering by, mostly of violent actions. Again and again this man had abused, broken and stolen people and things. That mattered little to the thirst; it was a slave to its own nature, and understood. What puzzled it was the apparent pleasure the man took from it. He did those things not because he had to, but because he wanted to.
Then one image froze. The mind behind the thirst gasped. Red began to seep back into everything, fury driving out other concerns.
It saw, just for a moment, the man standing above a bathtub in a tiled room that was both alien and somehow familiar. In the tub, eyes bulging, arms hanging limply over the sides, gouges torn into the wrists that turned them into lipless mouths that grinned death and spoke blood, was a woman.
Something about this woman fueled the thirst’s anger, made it determined to kill the man it found itself hiding within. In the image, the wrists of his red sport coat were wet. His fingers were pruny. In his left hand he held a pocketknife stained with rust and fresh blood. The sense of satisfaction in the image was almost a physical thing. The thirst could practically hear the man muttering to himself about a job well done. He had killed this woman, and had enjoyed it.
The red haze grew stronger, overtaking the image and leaving nothing but a crimson void. The thirst wailed, wanting more, but knowing it was powerless against the forced slumber that was coming.
But, as before, there would be a period of waking to follow. Retribution would follow that. The thirst demanded it.
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The diary of someone else’s NaNaWriMo journey; stop by and show some support, eh? (Comments are disabled here; please visit the original post.)
Friday started out pretty rough. I only got 800 words, and since I have been pounding out over 1000 a day typically, I was feeling discouraged. I sensed a wall coming, one I wouldn’t be able to break through, and then came Saturday and my kiddos. I was concerned not much writing would get done […]
Chrysanthemum Graves decided it wanted to do it’s own thing. A character who wasn’t supposed to exist (except maybe as background decoration) butted in and said “Excuse me, but I believe I am the villain of this piece.”
It was supposed to be a struggle between one ex-Yakuza and the ghost of his dead fiancee. Now the father of that fiancee has gotten involved, is probably the reason she’s haunting anyone at all, and is a bigger tool than one thought possible.
Now I’m torn. Do I try to force it back to where Akane was the only villain (reluctant, cursed, or otherwise), or do I let Arai run rampant, potentially to the level of laying a smackdown on my MC when he thinks he’s safe?
I can’t decide. Thankfully, I don’t need to come back to either Akane or Arai’s POV for a little bit, so they can simmer in the back brain and argue over who’s the actual antagonist of the story.
Anyone else have this issue? Have your supposed villains stepped aside without planning to reveal someone else as the bad guy? Do your antagonists argue with each other over who’s actually the baddest of the bad? Share your stories below!
Despite my previous complaints, I am still slamming my head against the wall, hoping to get as much of Chrysanthemum Graves done as I can during the month, even if I don’t hit the 50k. We’re riding in not quite at the 5k mark right now. That may be sad, but it’s also more than I’ve managed to put on a manuscript in months… maybe years. So… progress?
I’ve also managed to post something here every day for 100 days in a row. That feels reasonably accomplished. I’m trying.
To celebrate, I thought I’d share a chunk of Chrysanthemum Graves. Let me know what you think. If you want to be buddies for NaNo, I’m listed as Kaine Andrews over there, too. Or you can stalk me on Twitter. And, usual shameless plug, if you like what I do and want to help me keep doing it, you can drop by my Patreon or drop a dime in the bucket for my surgery GoFundMe. Thanks, and enjoy!
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The thirst came first. Desperate, gnawing, unbearable thirst. The entirety of existence was akin to the Mojave, with no respite in sight.
Sight. That was next. Darkness, brightening to white as though someone was toying with the options on a television remote. Then scaling back to a happy medium, where shapes and colors were recognizable, though all tinged with a blue-gray haze. Then, as though that invisible hand upon the remote was continuing to press buttons, the blue darkened to violet before brightening again to red. Everything looked as though it had been soaked in blood or seen through a rage-tainted lens.
This brought back the thirst. It was a physical thing, clawing and biting inside. For what remained unknown, but it had to be fed.
Hearing came after that. The rustling of something burrowing into the suede couch that sat directly ahead. The skittering of a spider somewhere in the wall, a violin melody of webs being spun and woven. The rush of water and hiss of air running through the pipes.
The water in the pipes stank, awakening the sense of smell. Nothing about it was appealing, even when propped against the monstrous thirst that threatened to consume everything. Cold, clear, filled with purifiers and minerals and small bits of the metal tubes through which it traveled. The taste of it was even worse, burrowing inside like a noxious worm seeking only to destroy and corrode everything it touched.
Recoiling in revulsion, the thirst caught wind of something else. A smell that matched the colors, that called to the thirst with a sweet song of relief. There. The other room.
As though the thought alone was sufficient, the bed appeared. A figure, sleeping. The smell was heavenly, ambrosia to the soul. Sweat, tinged with the salts and hormones of deep fear and deeper grief. Warm flesh, upon which hundreds of tiny hairs could be seen standing at attention. Beneath both, a glorious red smell, pushed outward with each of the figure’s sighing breaths. This is what the thirst wanted.
The figure’s throat, throbbing with the pulse that called those red rides and kept them flowing. This is what the thirst wanted most.
The thirst demanded it. Tangled itself around that fragile neck, tightening like a noose and lapping at the flesh like a timid but eager lover. Beads of blood seeped through the skin, and as the thirst drew them in the feeling was orgasmic.
The body thrashed, pulling away. The thirst, not sated but only growing, tried to tighten its grip. Whatever force animated it refused to obey. Weakness rippled through it, taste and hearing fading away, sight dimming.
The thirst cried out, still craving the life beneath it, but those words were echoes of echoes at best, unheard and useless.
Nothingness claimed it, and the thirst slept again. But this time, there were dreams… and they were red.
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From the title, you might think there’s actual progress to be seen.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. Chrysanthemum Graves sits at around 3,700 words as of the last session, which is around 8,700 words short of where it should be to meet the goal of 50k in the month.
There’s a lot of reasons for that. I’ve been sicker than usual (strep throat), I’ve been moving and managed to pull almost every muscle on my right side from my waist to the neck, my mental health symptoms have been getting worse and the shrink can’t see me until the end of the month, I’ve been spending a lot of time arguing on the phone with assorted individuals relating to my medical care, my disability, and bill collectors who are getting rabid. But none of those are the real reason. I don’t sleep much for assorted reasons, so there’s about 20 usable hours in the day most of the time.
It’s motivation. Some of that is tied to the depression, of course, but mostly it’s just a sense of pointlessness to the whole thing. It’s what has been beating me back from trying to write for two years now, and every day it only seems to get worse. It’s a sense of “why write it down? I pretty much know how the story goes, and nobody else is likely to read it anyway. Lots of effort for no gain.” There’s the part that looks at garbage like Onision’s books and starts festering. Some folks would go “I can do better than that,” and set out to do it; I say “I have done better than that, multiple times, and nobody cared.” Meanwhile, Stones to Abbigale sits happily at 3.5 stars with 800 reviews (mostly only drug down by the hate-readers, from what I see.) I’m aware comparison is bad form and a quick route to self-defeating thought, but part of me can’t help it. (I suspect it’s the part that was told again and again that I wasn’t good enough and someone else was always better, or the part who was told his accomplishments meant nothing while others benefitted from them, claimed them as their own or were celebrated for hitting far less impressive milestones. Some scars don’t heal.) There’s the part that still remembers my mom saying “Nobody wants to read that crap,” despite not having read a word of what I had written, and chucking the sheets I’d printed into the trash. There’s the part that remembers a coworker who asked what my hobbies were; when I told them I write, their response was “Git gud.” That individual also writes; primarily gender-swapped and trans-centric Ms. Peregrine fan fiction that has never seen a spell-checker, let alone an editor or even a pass through Grammarly. It does very well on Wattpad, from what I’ve seen. (Certainly leagues better than anything I’ve posted there.)
I know I’m a petty bitch. Even the Grammarly plugin is giving me a frowny face. I just seem to be lacking the knowledge of how not to be.
Hopefully some of the rest of you writers out there are doing better, both in the great NaNoWriMo race to 50k and in general.
So, according to the standard, I should have somewhere around or just shy of 5k words written on Chrysanthemum Graves.
Yeah, that’s not happening. I’m at about 2,400. So… yeah. Somehow being at less than half of target only three days in does not give me hope, especially when there are people already claiming to have their full 50k done. Cool trick.
We’ll see. I’m going to try to keep at it, assuming I survive the plague that continues to ail me (I will never eat at Red Robin again, I assure you), but don’t know if I’ll come anywhere close to hitting the goal, let alone finishing the story.
Hope the rest of you folks are having better luck out there, whether your projects are part of NaNoWriMo or not. Good luck, folks.
Take pity, and eternal gratitude will be yours; helps keep this site running and the words flowing.
Insomniac Nightmares 
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